


This is How She was Going to Die

by SuchaPrettyPoison



Series: Swooner [7]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Freeform, Gen, Humor, Swoonerverse, first day of work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuchaPrettyPoison/pseuds/SuchaPrettyPoison
Summary: She never in her wildest dreams thought that this was the way she was going to die.Kidnapped, tortured, and killed to send a message?  Totally.Death by starvation while being partially suck in a vending machine had never crossed her mind.**Felicity's first day working for the Star City P.D.  What could possibly happen?





	

**Author's Note:**

> ** If you are new, I recommend starting at the beginning of the Swooner series. If you are a fan of being reckless and jumping into things feet first, welcome!  
> Things to know for this AU:  
> Felicity was raised by her father, who is wanted by authorities, made for an interesting childhood.  
> Oliver is a detective.
> 
> Also, I am sick.  
> This is coming to you from the mind of someone who is hopped up on over the counter meds because she refuses to go to the doctor.  
> Hope it makes some sort of sense...

This is how Felicity was going to die.  
This was going to be her last day on earth which just happened to correlate with her first day working with the Star City P.D.  
Granted this wasn’t how she figured she’d die. There had been a time when she had nightly dreams about all the different ways her death would come about. Maybe that wasn’t a normal thig to think about, but it was something that had plagued her mind for some time, gave her a twisted view of the world, but hey, she never in her wildest dreams thought that this was the way she was going to die.

Kidnapped, tortured, and killed to send a message? Totally.  
Death by starvation while being partially suck in a vending machine had never crossed her mind. There was a moment where she thought that this might fit in the death by embarrassment scenario, but no.  
She was going to die, because her arm was stuck in the machine.  
And not only was her arm stuck, but she was crouched at an odd angle with her arm shoved up into the machine – her salivation of delicious chips was just out of reach of her fingertips, hanging by the tiniest edge of the bag.  
This was the universes sign that she should not being working with the po-po. 

It was also a sign that even she was a certified genius, she was an idiot.  
Frack she needed to get out of the station.  
Oh, Ada Lovelace, she needed to get out before she saw Oliver.  
Not that she would be embarrassed with him catching her in this situation. No, he’d seen the types of situations she had a knack of getting herself into. She needed to get out without seeing him, because he liked to be her cool, calm, and collected voice of reason. The man had convinced her to move in with him and date him. He deserved a medal.  
Why hadn’t she gotten him a medal yet?  
Oh, it could be a cheap sheriff’s badge. That would be cute, and a nodded to their first date. Well, not their actual ‘first date’ but their first meeting which Felicity liked to count as their first date every now and then.

Fracking Ada Lovelace.  
John couldn’t see her either, or he’d sick Oliver on her. Because even though John Diggle rounded out their awesome trio, he was still Oliver’s partner and would rat her ass out in a hot second.

There was a rumble and her mind shifted back to how she was going to die from hunger. She would end up on the Darwin list. What would her father think?  
They’d spent their lives surviving only for her downfall to be a bag of chips that didn’t fall properly.

Felicity was not going to die this way! She was fracking Felicity Smoak and she was a survivor. 

A flash of red. Roy walked past.  
Yes.  
He was in awe (and slightly terrified) of Oliver and was in Thea’s orbit. And by in Thea’s orbit, she meant that there was a car incident, a stolen wallet, and then Thea might have broken into his house. But Thea totally had a crush on him, which meant the man was a goner.  
She could work him into helping her escape and then escape again.

“Red! Yo-ho! Red, look this was. Follow the voice down to hell and damnation if you don’t help to set me free.” Damn, she was the boss at getting people’s attention! Roy came back into view of the doorway and stopped. She gave him a charmingly innocent smile.

“Hey there Red, nice of you to join us. Wanna come play knight in shining armor?”

“Red?” 

That was what he was going to focus on? Seriously?  
Well, time to explain her thought process on the nickname.

“Yeah, well you like to wear that red hoodie and Roy pretty much means red, so there’s that.”

“And how do you know this?”

She chose to answer his question with a question. “Doesn’t everybody?”

He answered her question with a question. “What are you doing?” 

Really? Wasn’t he on the path to become a detective? Couldn’t he figure out by context clues what was going on? She even wiggled her figure on the other side of the glass.  
A smartass response was clearly needed.

“Getting ready for a ballet recital.”

He lifted an eyebrow.  
Felicity could see why Thea liked him. Sometimes you needed someone who wasn’t ruffled easily, or at least didn’t appear to be ruffle easily.  
Roy Harper had eyes that were too old for someone his age. She knew the look, because she saw them when she looked in the mirror, and when she looked at Oliver. Oh, Thea was going to light him up. In a good way that is.  
Thea was the good kind of crazy. Felicity would know – she was the good kind of crazy as well.

“You do realize you’re the one asking for my help?”

He did have a point.

“Yes. Yes I am. Now are we going to work to free me from the machine that is trying to eat me?”

“Let me get Oliver.”

“No!” Too much. Bring it down Felicity. “No.” Better. “Look, I love Oliver. He’s my favorite, I fully plan on keeping him, but I can’t run away when he’s around because he has a weird grounding effect on me. And I really wound just like to go home and put all of this behind me. It was a stupid idea. Me working here. I’m not meant for,” she moved her free hand all around, “this.”  
Roy tilted his head as she rambled and his eyebrows puckered together. Maybe she should have just called Thea. Thea would have her back.  
This was the perfect move.

“You wanna know what? Feel free to leave and forget this ever happened.”

“Really?”

The look he gave her did not make her feel like he was going to leave and forget this ever happened. A girl could hope though.

“Yes. I have a plan now.”

“Does your plan involve Thea Queen?”

Was he a mind reader?

“What would ever make you possibly think that?” 

“Call it a hunch. Hey, Diggle. Can you come in here?” 

Frack.  
None of this was going to plan. Time to attempt self-rescue number twenty-seven.  
Pulling back the arm that was stuck, while having her free hand pushing against the machine hadn’t worked all the previous times, but maybe this was going to be the one time that it worked.  
She’d been taught how to escape handcuffs, zip ties, and ropes, who would have thought that she needed to know how to escape a vending machine.  
Diggle stepped into the doorway, raising an eyebrow as he looked down at her. He was such a large and intimidating man, but he was the teddy dear version of Yoda. Felicity didn’t need Yoda in this moment.

“How’s your first day going?” Was that laughter in his voice? Really?

“The universe is telling me to go home.”

“I think this is the universe’s way of keeping you here.”

Oh. She could see that logic. Not that she’d tell John that.

No she was going to leave. This place was all wrong for her and clearly it was trying to find ways to kill her.

“All I want right now is to have my left arm free. I never realized how found I was of it until now.”

“Let me go get Oliver.”

“Why does everyone want to go get Oliver? I am stuck in a vending machine. Free me and then go get Oliver.”

“Yeah. We’ve been put under orders if anything out of the ordinary happened with you to get Oliver.” Roy spoke up with a slow smile spreading across his face.

“He told you all to do what?” Felicity was close to seething. The nerve of that man!

“Detective Queen didn’t give that order. I did.” 

Captain Lance made his way into their gathering.  
Great. This is just what she needed.

Pasting on her most charming smile, she gave the Captain a little wave. He had given her a job because Oliver had asked, so she figured she could be friendly. The Captain had hired the daughter of one of the country’s most wanted cyber criminals, and even though her record was pretty clean, Oliver knew her hands were dirty (but they were dirty in the good way, she’d saved his ass more than once).  
Still, if it hadn’t been for Oliver she wouldn’t have gotten this job. They would have never taken her on knowing her background. 

“Hey there Captain. To be fair, this really isn’t out of the ordinary. So, no need to grab Oliver. I just need someone to help free me. I’d rather not die attached to a vending machine.”

Ada Lovelace. This was turning into a circus act. 

“Well, we do need to get you out. A case just came in that could use your unique skill set.”

“Wait. Really?” Yes, she’d taken a job here but she didn’t really think they would give her actual cases to work on. She figured they’d give her busy work, or be the computer help girl, but she hadn’t expected that they might actually want her for her unique skill set.

“What? You thought I hired you just so you could spend all your time at the vending machines? Naw. Queen brought in a computer riddled with bullet holes. We need the information that is on that laptop. It’s at your desk with a file on the case. This is a top priority. Lives on the line and all that.”

Felicity felt her chest constrict. She could do good. Actual good working here.  
And they wanted her. They wanted what she could bring to the table to bring down criminals.  
Could it be that she’d actually gotten this job because of who she was and not because of who Oliver was?  
There were emotions. So many emotions coursing through her, that she kind of half slumped against the glass of the death trap, closed her eyes and smiled.

“Why wasn’t I invited to the party?”

Oliver’s voice caused her eyes to snap open. Her first reaction was to tell him how they had hired her because they actually wanted her, to then remembering that she was annoyed that everyone wanted to leaved her trapped and go find Oliver.

“Your invitation must have been lost in the mail.” Felicity said just as Oliver came into view. The tiny room was now filled to the max with testosterone and she really needed to get loose so that she could get to work.  
The Captain had said lives were on the line.  
Felicity Smoak needed to go help save some lives with her unique skill set.  
That felt good to think.

“We were just on our way to get you.” John said with his knowing smile.

Felicity turned -- well as much as she could, it was more of a slight shift -- to Captain Lance, there was one thing that she needed to get straight before the getting free and lifesaving could happen.

“Why did you give an order to get Oliver if I got into anything?”

“Because if I didn’t he would have wanted to be glued to your side to make certain you had a smooth first day. It would have driven me insane and so I was pretty certain you don’t need an overbearing shadow. Told him that if you had any troubles we’d let him know.”

Oliver’s overprotective side was one that she knew all too well and the Captain was trying to keep both of them sane and happy.

“Well, right now I just need to freed, so that I can get to work. Exciting work that you actually want me to do.”

But even as she spoke Oliver had moved next to her, his hands on the flap that was holding her arm hostage. Giving his hands a squeeze that did delicious things to his forearms, there was the sound of plastic and metal creaking, and then there was enough room for her to slip her arm free.  
The bag of chips still hung there. Mocking her.  
But there were more important things to be done than to grumble about chips.  
There wasn’t even time to relish the fact that she was free.  
No, right now she had a job that needed all of her attention.

“Move out of my way boys. I got to go work my magic.” Giving them all a salute she rushed out of the room like it was on fire, made a hard left, and then swung open a door that would lead her to her station. Just as Captain Lance had said, there was a bullet ridden laptop sitting there in-front of her monitors along with a thick case file.

It wasn’t until Oliver came in to see how she was doing that she realized it was nearing the end of the day.

“I just need to finish a few things, and then I can let the final scan run overnight, and in the morning I should have a report put together with everything I’ve been able to salvage.” She spoke without looking up at him, even though he was resting idly against her desk.

“How’s the arm?”

“I’ve had worse.” She waved it in the air, proving that it was fine, just a bit bruised.

“How was your first day?”

That question caused her to pause for a moment and she looked up meeting his blue eyes, the bag of chips that had mocked her was resting in his hand closest to her (hello, pre-dinner snack). This man was always looking out for her, she’d never really had that before, and even if it was too much it always came from a place of love. Love he had for her.  
Being with him made her not think about all the ways she was going to die, but all the ways she was going to live.  
She had a home. Had friends. Now she had a job that she could use her skills in to do good.  
So, she gave him a bright smile and held out her hand for the chips.

“I’ve had worse.”

**Author's Note:**

> It has been too long.  
> Far too long!
> 
> And it is all my fault because, well life...and because although we all know what that means, I know you are also going 'but what do you mean?'  
> What I mean is, since we all last saw each other, I have become the proud owner of a visa and will be moving to Ireland to be with my one true love (yep, he's Irish. yep, we've been doing long distance for going on five years now. yep, it's true love). Also, writing a completely original story. Which I totally need to find a beta for to see if torturing myself over it is really even worth it. It works off of Scottish and Irish mythology and things...fantasy/romance guess...anywho. So, life has been a bit hectic and all that jazz. 
> 
> Now, this story comes to you all because as the notes in the beginning said. I am sick. I am home from work. I am on lots of over the counter in hopes to cure me.  
> I wont from a dream going, what if Felicity got stuck in a vending machine, met Roy, had a moment of thinking the only reason she got this job was Oliver, only to realize she got it because she was a badass.
> 
> It's short and sweet. And I'm sure when I'm in my right mind I will look through this and go, what the utter fuck was I thinking. But oh well.
> 
> As always. I hope I have not failed this story/verse!
> 
> tumblr: [SuchaPrettyPoison](http://www.suchaprettypoison.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [SamyRed_](https://twitter.com/SamyRed_)


End file.
